


Flower

by PlayingTheGameOfThrones



Series: Marked [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:47:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11918289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlayingTheGameOfThrones/pseuds/PlayingTheGameOfThrones
Summary: When Meredith Quill was a girl, she watched the stars with her father.





	Flower

When Meredith Quill was a girl, she watched the stars with her father. He would teach her the names of the constellations and the planets and the galaxies, the night sky bright and clear out in the Missouri plains. She's thirteen when he brings the radio out with them for the first time.

"Show me Orion," her father said, adjusting the knob on the radio. That new song from Looking Glass was playing. That was fine with Meredith. She thought it might just be her favorite song, even if it was sad.

"There," she said, pointing to the stars that made up his belt. That was an easy one, but her father didn't know many constellations, and the ones he did know, he had learned for her.

Mr. Quill grabbed hold of one of his daughter's golden curls and tugged, coaxing a laugh out of her. "Mer, you've been looking up at the stars ever since your mama and I brought you home from the hospital. Even as a baby you were always staring up at the sky, like you were looking for something up there."

"So you bought an encyclopedia and started looking up at the stars with me," she finished for him, flashing a toothy grin. She'd listened to her father tell the story of how they started looking up at the stars together a thousand times. "Did...did Mama like looking up at the stars, too?"

Her father gave her a sad smile as he switched the radio off. He took Meredith's tiny hand in his large calloused one and traced the shape of the blue heart on her wrist, illuminated by the light of the full moon. "The stars weren't your mama's thing, my little river lily. Music was."

"Is that why your Mark is a music note?"

Mr. Quill kissed the back of his daughter's hand and set it gently back on the grass between where they lay. "Yes, my river lily. Someday you'll meet your Marked, too."

Meredith sighed contentedly and turned her attention back to the stars. She wasn't sure she believed in a god, but just in case, she prayed to whoever might be listening up in the stars that she'd be as happy with her Marked as her mother and father had been. But maybe they could have a happier ending.

***

Yondu Udonta has never heard music. He has never seen the stars. All he sees are the bars of his cage, and the blood of those the Kree want dead. The blood of those they make him kill.

And the white flower that keeps growing back on his wrist, no matter how many times they make him cut it off.

These are the things that make up a battle slave's life. Cages. Blood. Cruelty. A lily. (Though of course he doesn't know his Mark is a Terran river lily. It is a wide and wonderful galaxy, but he has seen none of it but battlefields. And flowers don't grow on battlefields.)

A knife is tossed into his cell, clattering on the floor and waking the Centaurian slave from a fitful sleep. "The Mark has grown back again," the Kree guard grunts. Yondu takes the hint of the knife in his hand. "You know what to do."

In one motion, Yondu slices the skin of his wrist open. He watches numbly as blood replaces the flower.

Blood. Always blood.

He is twenty before the Ravagers pluck him from a battlefield and make him into a different sort of slave.

"I am Stakar," their leader says to the angry Centaurian in front of him, quivering in equal parts fear and rage. "You're one of us now."

Yondu spits at the man's feet, and a dozen men of as many species swarm their leader, snarling with their hands on their various weapons. Stakar raises a hand and they reluctantly step back. All but one, a man who looks as if he's made of shards of glass. "We're not the Kree," their leader says in a slightly softer tone. "We despise the Kree. Probably almost as much as you do."

Yondu snarls. "Did they rip your fin from your head too? Did they make you kill for them before ya even knew what killin' was? Did they lock you up in a cage for half yer life, the other half makin' ya fight their battles for em? Makin' ya wipe out whole families and cities?"

Hate for the Kree is all he has left. He doesn't know who these Ravagers are or why they stole him, but he knows damn well they haven't seen the things he's seen, been made to do the things he's done.

"Take him to the tailor," their leader says, and Yondu is dragged away. "You're free now."

 


End file.
